'Bury the hatchet' ..and ruin your temper!

[British Red]

If you can "punch it out with a stick" (without drilling it) then you didn't have it fitted very well to begin with.

I was thinking the same thing. Any axe handle I fitted wouldn't shift with a steel punch and a club hammer. You have to break up the wood with a drill, chisel etc.

I remember Mors Kochanski telling me that he filed deep nicks into the metal wedges he fitted so that he could hook them out with a screwdriver. I tried it and it really does work, but I still couldn't get the wooden wedge out (but admittedly drilling the wood out was easier with no metal to hit)

 

[Samon]

Considering hand drills have been around hundreds of years and alot of labourers from back then must have known a thing or two about steel hardening (I'm sure axe swinging wasn't their olny talent or base of knoweledge..) even if it was just very very whispered basics.

Hand drill, break up the remains with a chisel (both common tools even then) and hammer out. Simple, quicker and better for the integrity of the tools longevity.

And from the looks of old axes I come across, some folk clearly gave no thought to bashing the hell out of them and treating them like disposable junk. So I guess they probably did know it will effect the temper, but just didn't give a hoot. How many mushroom pommel axe heads have you guys seen? Pen knives sharpened on a grinder until they look like toothpicks? vintage chisels used to stir paint and then left to rot in a shed for 40 years?

It's seemingly only now, generations on when the most part of our tools are for hobbies and pleasure that we take the time to learn and treat them properly.

So, old school isn't always the best school!

 

[santaman2000]

Considering hand drills have been around hundreds of years and alot of labourers from back then must have known a thing or two about steel hardening (I'm sure axe swinging wasn't their olny talent or base of knoweledge..) even if it was just very very whispered basics.

Hand drill, break up the remains with a chisel (both common tools even then) and hammer out......

Yep; if you have somewhere to clamp the axe down (hand drills take both hands. Not too many vises on the back of old log wagons. Nor most dirt farms for that matter.

 

[santaman2000]

..... Simple, quicker and better for the integrity of the tools longevity.

And from the looks of old axes I come across, some folk clearly gave no thought to bashing the hell out of them and treating them like disposable junk......

......How many mushroom pommel axe heads have you guys seen? Pen knives sharpened on a grinder until they look like toothpicks? vintage chisels used to stir paint and then left to rot in a shed for 40 years?.....

Guilty of all of those. Indeed ALL tools are disposable. Reusable? Yes. Something to worship? Hardly. An axe was used for many thing it wasn't intended for: the back for hammering in stakes, the corners of the back were used as wire cutters (place the edge of the axe into something solid like a log or stump, place the wire on the corner and cut it by hitting with a hammer; mushrooms the back of the axe a bit but so what? That can be filed off) etc. They were meant to be used, abused, and then replaced when worn out.

 

[santaman2000]

....It's seemingly only now, generations on when the most part of our tools are for hobbies and pleasure that we take the time to learn and treat them properly.

So, old school isn't always the best school!

Yep. Now we pretty them up and show them off as if the axe or knife was the point in and of itself. Unless of course you ever made a living with them; in which case you remember just filing the edge every few days and throwing it in the back of the log truck between uses (and no they won't rust if you use them regularly)

I always took my pleasure in a job well done (3 loads of logs, or poles, or paperwood a day; a month's worth of firewood split and stacked; etc.) The tools used to accomplish those jobs were just that, tools.

But you're right that old school isn't always the best school. By the time I started logging with my family we were using chainsaws instead of misery whips and tractors instead of horses (although I was old enough to remember seeing the horses still used)

 

[santaman2000]

.....I remember Mors Kochanski telling me that he filed deep nicks into the metal wedges he fitted so that he could hook them out with a screwdriver. I tried it and it really does work, but I still couldn't get the wooden wedge out (but admittedly drilling the wood out was easier with no metal to hit)

I've never used a metal wedge myself. Not on an axe anyway, although I do use them on tools such as hammers (no special reason; I just haven't ever done it) but that sounds like a good idea.

 

[Samon]

Yep; if you have somewhere to clamp the axe down (hand drills take both hands. Not too many vises on the back of old log wagons. Nor most dirt farms for that matter.

Evolution gave us pretty usable feet, I've held things with my feet to work on in the past, and although it adds to my overal hunched over gorrilla look, it does just fine. And improvised holding blocks can be knocked up in minutes to give a free space for the old handle to be bashed out clean without much issue or hitting the floor.

And of course I understand the need to use a tool for everything and anything when you have to, but.. there's a limit when we have knowledge that will prolong such a needed tool. Especially for hill folk who rarely saw people they weren't genetically related to! Bugger up your axe in the sticks and you may run in to trouble. Use it as a daily tool for chores and work, but still gotta keep it in shape or anything can happen and ruin a whole days work and pay.

Ideally we'd all have a slave boy to fix our brutalised tools once we're done trashing them, but mine keep escaping! It's those cheap chinese made locks..

 

[Samon]

I've never used a metal wedge myself. Not on an axe anyway, although I do use them on tools such as hammers (no special reason; I just haven't ever done it) but that sounds like a good idea.

Top tip for when you do use a metal wedge, do NOT put it in too far from the same angle as the wooden wedge as it can/will split the handle and wedge! On older projects when I was less experienced I had a crack go from the top of the eye all the down under the bloody head because of a metal wedge! Seriously pee'd me off and I had to start again, drilling and bashing the darn thing out.

Never fitted a tubular metal wedge though, but my Hultafors Bruks axe has one and it seems crackless.

 

[santaman2000]

I've never fitted a tubular wedge either, but like you, I've used hammers with them fitted.

 

[santaman2000]

Evolution gave us pretty usable feet, I've held things with my feet to work on in the past, and although it adds to my overal hunched over gorrilla look, it does just fine. And improvised holding blocks can be knocked up in minutes to give a free space for the old handle to be bashed out clean without much issue or hitting the floor.

And of course I understand the need to use a tool for everything and anything when you have to, but.. there's a limit when we have knowledge that will prolong such a needed tool.....

I'm well acquainted with improvisation such as "holding it between your feet." It plays hand in hand with using the axe itself for unintended tasks. I suspect the limited other tools used by the generations I'm talking about stems from their time period. My parents grew up during the Great Depression. Tools like axes were common (literally everybody out in the country had at least two) and I expect cheap whereas specialty tools such as drills would have only been owned by those in the building trades or by somebody who happened to inherit them. Likely they borrowed such tools back and forth among each other or traded for work.

In an earlier post you mentioned something which has at least partial validity on their attitudes. You stated that they probably knew it would affect the temper and just didn't give a hoot. Possibly so. What they definitely knew was that in the end it didn't matter; the axe still did it's job just fine. When I commented that tools are meant to be used, abused, and replaced when worn out it wasn't meant to infer that they deliberately went out of their way to abuse them, just that they expected a cdertain level of misuse and didn't go out of their way to give tools TLC either. There just wouldn't have been time. Once the logs were hauled to the mill, you still had to come home, put the animals away for the night and feed them, cut the firewood (unless you had kids young enough to stay home from work and do that and tend the animals) and then tend the veg garden. All before dark.

 

[Jared]

An impact nail puller is good for removing metal wedges... as soon as you can get a solid bite levering it out is no problem.

Also would think old timers would recycle the axe head. Into either wedges or log dogs and such.

 

[OneGear]

If you can "punch it out with a stick" (without drilling it) then you didn't have it fitted very well to begin with. It's take an hour to hammer my axe handles out with proper chisels.

As for "waiting around for a few hours" with the burning method, the common practice was usually to put it in the fire one day and go about your business until you retrieved it the next morning. "....Consumes more resources?" What resources are being consumed? Firewood? So just what farmer/homesteader/logger doesn't already have a fire going anyway?

I fix axes other folks helved. Nice move, indicting my skills rather than learning something.

BTW, a proper chisel is a wedge. The reason to use a simple stick is because it pushes the eye clear without increasing friction inside the eye. You know, the way a wedge does.

What farmer/homesteader/logger doesn't understand firewood as a valuable resource?!?

This is precisely the reason I was reluctant to post.

 

[santaman2000]

An impact nail puller is good for removing metal wedges... as soon as you can get a solid bite levering it out is no problem.

Also would think old timers would recycle the axe head. Into either wedges or log dogs and such.

Thanks for the tip about the nailer.

I expect what the "old timers" did with the old heads depended on location and just which "old time" they were in. Remote homesteaders probably reused everything (we were taught in history that the early colonists even burnt down old cabins to salvage the iron nails) but I imagine not all of them had the forging skills for more elaborate projects. During the depression era most would probably have sold it to metal salvagers for needed cash.